SACRAMENTO — By 2006, California could have a dramatically different political landscape, with part-time and more moderate legislators and a more streamlined state bureaucracy, if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s renewed threats against the status quo catch fire with voters.

As the governor fights against a Legislature he says is resisting his calls for change, he is campaigning this weekend against individual lawmakers. He has again threatened to push a ballot measure to create part-time Legislature.

Combined with an open-ballot primary initiative on the November ballot pushed by Schwarzenegger supporters, the crop of politicians elected

in 2006 could find themselves both part-time and term limited.

“To the extent he gets stymied by a Legislature unwilling to come to grip with the issues, I think the voters are going to be totally sympathetic to making significant changes,” says Sal Russo, a veteran Republican consultant.

The governor, who frequently campaigns as an anti-politician while also attempting to master the Capitol’s Byzantine ways, has recently resumed the outsider persona with a vengeance, deriding lawmakers individually and collectively, and threatening again to smash the political system. Rebuffed by both Democratic and some Republican legislators over his spending plan — and losing face over his promises to deliver a budget on time — the governor is taking aim at the state’s governing institutions.

In Ontario on Saturday, with fast-food restaurants and a video game arcade as a backdrop, Schwarzenegger told hundreds of people attending a rally in a mall food court that they should vote Democratic lawmakers out of office if they stand in the way of passing a state budget.

After saying lawmakers should put the people’s interests first through bipartisanship, Schwarzenegger said Democrats were holding up the budget by refusing to back down on issues important to trial lawyers and unions. He drew boisterous cheers from mall-goers when he said the lawmakers were “girlie men” too afraid to admit they favored “special interests” over the public interest.

“If these guys won’t do the job, I’m going to announce each of you a terminator,” Schwarzenegger said in reference to his widely known action film. “Nov. 2 is judgment day. That’s when you go to the polls.”

Schwarzenegger’s appearance before hundreds of cheering shoppers at the Ontario Mills mall was part of his effort to pressure Democratic lawmakers. The governor and Democratic leaders agree they’re stuck on three points — local government financing and the repeal of two labor laws.

Today he is scheduled to appear in Stockton, the district of Democratic Assemblywoman Barbara Matthews.

One law prohibits schools from contracting services with private companies and the other gives workers authority to sue their employers to enforce labor laws. Democrats say they support the measures because they protect workers.

Though the governor didn’t name particular legislators, he held the rally in the home city of Democratic Assemblywoman Gloria Negrete McLeod. He appeared Friday in the district of one of this year’s few closely contested legislative districts, where Democratic Sen. Betty Karnette faces Republican Steve Kuykendall, a former legislator and congressman, for an open Assembly seat.

Schwarzenegger has had good results in his past direct appeals to public, including his push for workers’ compensation changes and a $15 billion bond deal earlier this year.

Though the audience cheered throughout Schwarzenegger’s speech Saturday, it was unclear whether audience members would put his calls to vote out Democrats into action.

Barbara Zinsmeyer, a 37-year-old homemaker from Redlands who is a registered Republican and voted for Schwarzenegger in October’s recall election, said she would vote in November based on particular candidates, not their party. She is undecided, for example, in the presidential race.

Zinsmeyer believes state lawmakers may be delaying the budget because they resent Schwarzenegger’s successes since taking office.

“Maybe there’s pride involved,” she said. “There might be jealousy.”

Pete Johnson, a teacher from Walnut, said he strongly agreed with Schwarzenegger that trial lawyers and unions were having too much influence on the budget. He said he belonged to the teacher’s union, but believed the governor, not the union, was responsible for getting him a raise this year.

“We got a raise this year because of Arnold, so tell those politicians to smoke it,” he said.

Analysts say the change in tone by a governor with 65 percent approval ratings, could, if sustained, have extensive repercussions on the nation’s most extensive political system outside of Washington, D.C.

“Californians have this really interesting proclivity to really like reforming government,” says Mark Petracca, political science professor at the University of California at Irvine. “It really is hard to find an example with a reform placed on the ballot where the public has not supported it.”

Schwarzenegger, who already has his California Performance Review plans to cut state bureaucracy in motion, said in Long Beach on Friday he plans to call a special election next year to make the Legislature part-time.

He’s not bluffing, spokeswoman Ashley Snee said Saturday.

“I would say it’s something he is seriously considering,” she explained after Schwarzenegger’s appearance in Ontario

The notion of a part-time Legislature coupled with term limits alarms many veteran political observers, including Barbara O’Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at California State University, Sacramento.

“They would be more dominated by big business and lobbyists and the infrastructure that surrounds the Capitol,” she says. “I think that’s not necessarily a good solution.”

California’s Field Poll director, Mark DiCamillo says he hasn’t tested public opinion for a part-time Legislature, an issue Schwarzenegger first raised in April, but adds, “My instincts wouldn’t be to dismiss it out of hand, that’s for sure.” His May 27 poll showed the Legislature with 27 percent approval ratings, less than half the 65 percent given the governor Californians elected last Oct. 7 in a historic recall election.

California is one of nine states where lawmaking is considered a full-time job. Voters in 1966 scrapped the state’s part-time Legislature for a new “professional” institution that quickly became hailed as a model for other states and the nation’s best lawmaking body. Other states with full-time legislatures include New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennyslvania and Wisconsin.

A June 10 Field Poll also showed 50 percent support for an open primary system that would let voters pick whomever they want in primary elections, regardless of parties, then send the top two choices to a November runoff. Though Schwarzenegger hasn’t taken a position on the idea, many of his business supporters are behind it, believing it will bring more moderate voices to a Legislature widely viewed as dominated by right- or left-wing lawmakers.

Such partisan differences have become a key ingredient of Sacramento’s annual budget standoff, producing late budgets from the Legislature every year since 1986.

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